


In A Garden Of Roses

by hellhoundsprey



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Anxiety Attacks, Captivity, Hallucinations, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Stockholm Syndrome, Traumatized Sam
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 08:03:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10532301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellhoundsprey/pseuds/hellhoundsprey
Summary: After his escape, Sam is left with nightmares. They get worse.(Inspired bythis video.)





	

**Author's Note:**

> Some [Music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M_-6bPQFjA) to go with this.

Milk, toast, OJ. Toothpaste. Light bulb for the fridge. Milk, toothpaste, OJ, light bulb, toast. OJ.

He flings the tea bag into the waste just before grabbing the cup, turning and running into Ian—sharp yelp, shock-loss of the cup that shatters on the ground and Ian laughs through the surprise and scorching of the tea on their feet. Sam doesn’t laugh.

A small lamp in a smaller apartment can only give so much light, but it’s sufficient. Sam realizes he forgot the milk. Well, dry cereal it is, then. He swipes past notifications and missed calls; Madison and Mom—phone back into the work bag, bag on the hanger by the front door.

Small spaces feel best, safest. The elevator is the best-worst, crammed as per usual and there’s the lift-off, the tightly-locked doors. The meds intensify it, that drowsiness, the lazy glide through countless floors. Sam is part of the crowd, the flock; faceless and eyes drooping. There is something though, someone, maybe looking at him, itching him wrong, forcing him to look up, spot the offense. It’s one of the suited guys that get off on the higher floors, slicked-back hair and looking tanned, awake. He doesn’t avert his eyes when Sam catches him looking, though. Up to the point where Sam breaks, actually, and maybe doesn’t after that.

Sam gets off on his floor and sinks into his cubicle in midst of all the others.

* * *

“Um. Do I know you?”

Raised eyebrow. Then, “I don’t think so.”

“I’m sorry, man, um. You just, you look really familiar.”

“Save it for the health club, pal.”

The guy slips out. Confusion, embarrassment glosses over the by now natural layer of nervousness, and Sam takes a shuddery breath, stares down to the tip of his sneakers.

The subway is crowded, warm, and Sam is lucky to score a seat. Hugs his bag tight, counts his breath, and it’s so easy to doze off here, twenty minutes is a good time window.

He’s cradled, here. Gentle rocking, someone talking nearby, whispered tired voices he can identify with, can slip into easily.

His eyes fall closed until the darkness shifts eventually.

He’s being rocked, still, but it’s different now. No ground underneath his feet—something is off, he’s aware of the fact that his foot is broken but he can’t feel it can’t see it; such a deep, real sensation of disorientation…

Breathing is excruciating. Free-fall. No sound. Just…

Someone, watching him. A fact like being alive, like the distant sensation of being inside one’s own body—and then the pain starts in, still in complete darkness, screams won’t come through like cotton in his mouth no something solid his teeth hurt and the pain won’t _stop_ —

Sam wakes under a subway-filled amount of eyes and he wonders if he has been screaming; people are leaning _away_ from him. Sweat is soaking him head to toe and he has to get out, now, leave. Runs the last few blocks until he’s reached home.

Bang the door shut (no better do it quietly so nobody knows), lock all the locks, shower or maybe not is it safe to do that right now or could you hurt yourself?

Floor and wall are equally hard, good to sit on, feel his bones grind under muscle and skin, press to the surface. The phone is silent and Sam wonders if psychics can dial numbers with their mind, hopes Suzy won’t call now maybe feels his desperation but he ends up _not_ calling her just like she doesn’t call _him_.

Pills, close your eyes, close your eyes, it’s just a dream, you’re awake, close your eyes, this is real.

* * *

“Tech support, this is Sam.”

“I need to see you in my office. Now.”

Gold-stamped letters spell ‘Smith’. Not Sam’s supervisor, so Sam is respectfully confused. Smith doesn’t tell him to sit, just stares, sizing Sam up or being wrongly intimidated by Sam’s height or build or whatever so Sam maybe didn’t shrink as much as he thought he has.

“So, regarding the new product.”

Nobody else knows anything about any new product and nobody has been called up for interview about it. Sam remembers hearing, “Because you’ve been doing such an extraordinary job down there,” but _has_ he, really? Remembering to shower, that’s an achievement.

Sam agreed to some business dinner, soon, the ‘new product’ blah blah blah and he’s several minutes into nothingness until he realizes he’s back at his cubicle, tapping the stress-relief bird bobblehead sitting next to his keyboard.

Bathroom, pills, breathing technique.

Few hours later sleep comes easy and Sam is too exhausted to resist. Not that any of his coworkers cares, or pays attention. (Worker bees; and Sam is a maggot amongst the hive.)

As he sinks onto his desk he falls into vertigo, too. Weirdly coppery smell and the foot is still gone/hurt, distant thrum of infection and he’s—still—incapable of looking down his body.

Something rears him back onto something that spears him, digs into him completely wrong and punches the little air he had right out of his mouth. He’s numb but for there and his foot, everything taken (kept?) from him but the pressure-tension on his hips/arms, the ropes there being pulled and manipulated like he’s a swing; a grip on him, somehow, somewhere.

His throat is blocked but he yearns to scream (feels like he has been, before, for too long, too loud) as he hurts, as he doesn’t get an explanation as to why this is happening, why he has to suffer and can’t even feel it right, the numbness is suffocating and real and.

Sam raises from his bed together with the bile in his throat, and re-takes twice the daily dose.

More dreams.

* * *

Madison lets him try for a long, humiliating while. Looks at him with pity more than personal loss, and the last manly thing he can do here is choke back the tears.

It had been a mistake to let her in on everything. Or, in the first place, to believe she’d stay. That things would get better, eventually. That Sam could be normal after what happened. That he could kiss or touch or sleep with his girlfriend after what the records say were months, without being thrown back, triggering memories and past realities he can’t/won’t accept, that keep him locked away, still.

Closeness, intimacy—that’s different now. Intimacy is sitting in the same room, at opposite ends of a table, and having a friendly, not-hostile conversation.

She’s still beautiful, smart, funny, and Sam still loves her; he _does_. But there’s a gap between them that never was supposed to be forced there. Some of the gaps are in Sam, some around him; invisible, incomprehensible. There still are plenty of events he can’t remember and that he won’t allow Suzy to dig out, not even after the four years it had taken Sam to get a job again, leave his apartment on a daily basis again. (And see how _that’s_ working out for him, huh.)

Not Suzy not Sam not Madison know the full extent. Know that there’s been broken bones that healed (up cracked) and deep scars that _didn’t_ , that the left kidney couldn’t be saved and the impotence could have something to do with being sodomized so much so violently we can’t really tell, Mr. Wesson, maybe it’s just a _mental_ thing, you’ve been having one _hell_ of a time down there.

Maybe that’s what she sees when she looks at him, now. On all fours for the stranger who mere minutes ago had shoved a hunting knife up Sam’s calf, sinews ripping blunt and the limp always reminds of that first time, will never go away. (She _sees_ that, _that_ ; Sam knows.)

Madison calls, later that night, maybe to tell him how ‘nice’ it was and that she’s ‘proud’ of him. Voice mail; delete. Not today. No more. If past-him had known how it would be—here, outside; daylight and air and free will—he wouldn’t have fought this hard to survive.

* * *

Ian used to try to get him involved in conversation, but Sam can tell he’s struggling with keeping that useless effort up. Sam can’t blame him. He wouldn’t like to hang out with himself either.

It’s hard (up to impossible) to remember how it was like, before. Was sleep ever _not_ taken for granted? What was it like to walk around, out there, without his mind jumping to That Time? No matter how hard he tries, his mind won’t come up with anything but sparse patches; mere seconds. Maybe a sentiment, a scent. Like grade school and artificially sweet tea, melon-flavored bubble gum. Madison’s perfume on their first date. His favorite burger and fries in his favorite bar.

“Can I get you something? Coffee? Tea?”

Smith talks gently, quietly. Waits for Sam to answer his many questions and listens (though he doesn’t take notes). Sam sips tea and almost falls asleep following the swirls and spins in the pattern of Smith’s necktie.

“You’re pale,” notes Smith. “Are you okay?” and then Sam is steadied against The Pillar, concrete under his feet and the ceiling is _not_ spinning, and God, no, not again, not again.

Fist to his bad eye and his wrists chafe raw, mild panic over feeling a tooth coming loose, whimper that tastes like blood and then he’s suspended again, head underwater and it’s freezing, he can’t breathe—

“HEY!”

Sam starts, eyes flash open to the image of Smith kneeling over him (and he’s broad; sharp-dainty features distorted in horror)—Sam’s cheek burns like it’s been slapped.

“Whu—what, what—”

“You, you—you just collapsed! I, we should call an ambulance, and—”

“Um n-no, you don’t have to, it’s not. I mean, it _happens_.”

Smith glares like ‘bullshit’. “You fall unconscious. On a regular basis?”

Awake now, Sammy?

“I’m fine.”

* * *

The fifth time he stares at it in the mirror, the bite mark is still there. Tries—and, yeah, he might have done that, but. Why? When?

He stays home and thus misses work, once. Smith is his first caller on the day after.

Too sick for tea. Smith sits on the edge of his desk, worries, obviously.

“Are you alright?”

No. “Yeah.”

“Bad week?”

Sam laughs. “Yeah.”

Smith has fine hands. Manicured, clean, huge. Lets them hold and squeeze each other, mesmerizing Sam in their grace. Sam feels them not much later, splayed and wide-smeared over his skin, in his hair.

(They taste like blood and sweat and metal, from handling the scissors so much.) Sam can see his own insides; Smith is showing them to him, handfuls of pink but once Sam comes real-alive there is _nothing_ , no scar, no scratch, no proof.

* * *

The worst dreams are those:

Where He’s gentle. Because gentle means He’s sorry, or will be sorry, and that always means pain, that always means no air and/or blood and Sam has so little of both.

Please. Please. (Sam always sounds muffled to Sam, raw-childish-useless.)

Shhh. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.

There’s so little pleasure down here that (and Sam figured this in a frenzy) it’s not _despicable_ to give in, even if for only a few seconds. That this is the best he can get next to dropping dead or unconscious (but He’s better and better, doesn’t let Sam slip out too often anymore).

In these dreams part of him is still worries if the constant ties on his hands might cause permanent damage (they did) as in that part still hopes he’ll get out, while that other part is already limp and surrendered and mostly-asleep.

He is feral-careless, sometimes. Not exactly ruthless, just…it pleases Him? Calms Him? A slow build-up, and He fucks like that, too. Slow, edging on ‘careful’ until He’s not, but Sam’s body has been robbed off tenderness and human touch for so long now that it doesn’t care because that’s _skin_ on Sam’s skin, raw velvet-soft warm familiar nice and it makes him _feel_ like that, too; held and kept, a nice pressure-lifting sensation in his guts next to the always-pain of flat surface against his damaged back. He hasn’t felt his hands in days, in that dream, and his eyes roll back into his head. Holding on.

The whip, later, separates skin from muscle.

It’s too much of a hassle to change the sheets every time. Sam doesn’t smell them anymore, anyway. You really get used to everything.

* * *

Do you believe in miracles, Sammy? Do you?

(Endless loop of that. Sam can’t place the sing-song of voice.) Sam starts with the scratching again, when he can’t sleep (always, and not really). He’s accompanied by constant phantom pains now, all kinds of sources and aches, all the time, like someone’s watching, touching, pulling.

The pills are almost gone and Suzy’s a phone call and half an hour away, two-days-in-advance booking but maybe this here would be qualified as an ‘emergency’. But Sam finds himself incapable of calling out.

“Do you want to wait here until the ambulance arrives?”

Sam fever-nods, and Smith helps him settling in the farthest corner, locks the doors so nobody but the two of them can see Sam/not-Sam, can see what he’s let himself come to. Shiver-sweat and the wall up his back helps, a little. Knees up and held tight and there’s the rocking, rocking always helps, somehow. Smith is quiet, somewhere in the room.

A melody. There used to be that song, when the worst would come. And why would Sam hear it _now_ , why here and now it doesn’t make _sense_ he’s going insane he’s not supposed to be here, he _made_ it, it’s supposed to be _over_ …

When will the ambulance finally come why is nobody coming. Where are the _pills_ , is he _talking_?

“Sorry, sorry.”

“It’s fine. You’re good. Calm down.”

Sam cries harder. Smith doesn’t touch.

Pain, again, searing and hot and the matching scars are re-pulsing so hard Sam screams—“Hey, hey, stay with me, c’mon—” Will you leave me, like the others? Or do you wanna stay? – No, no, let me stay, lemme stay, please (did he say that, did that happen?) and Sam’s on a floor, there are hands, he can’t move can’t see limbless and warm and a mouth, touch—no you’re not like them you’re different you’re something special; do you even know?

Sam sobs, “I don’t wanna die,” and Smith cradles his head, brushes hairs away and hums how it’s okay, how it’s all gonna be fine, promise, you promised.

“I don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die, please, please—”

“You won’t.”

Squinted eyes like pain, hand on Sam’s mouth to muffle, and Sam for the first time can grab back, can close two hands around that wrist, could pull it off and away but he’s too weak now, maybe bleeding out drained starved He hasn’t given him anything in two days.

“Hey, hey.” (Hiccuped ‘yes’.) “You promised.”


End file.
